A3

1. SEE
A Minimalist Interactives Project
SEE is a provocative set of three interactive games that allow players to
immerse themselves in the intricacies of a life created by the clash of
Asian and Western cultures, where contradictions and harmonies
constantly change my sense of self and the profound personal concerns
surrounding the cycle of life.
–
Assignment 3 Project Documentation
Nimuel S3926778

2. SEE
C/ONTROL C/REATION C/RIME
This project is titled "See" because it's where I convey how I see the essential elements of what it is to be a human being: Life, Death
and Freedom. For this project, it is represented by three Unity-created games that I've titled Control, Creation, and Crime—all three of
which begin with the letter C. (I'm so smart).
Here are the games and their purposes according to the assignment:
To convince that we are never in
control of anything. Everything we
do is affected, inspired, or influenced
by our environment.
Self-expression of the frustration for not
being as good as how I want myself to
be - Impostor Syndrome.
To convince that Euthanasia
and the choice to be able to end your life
after you are fulfilled with your life, no
matter the state - should be legal.

3. For this assignment, I'm focusing on combining my own aesthetics, skills and interest to portray the
ideas I have come up with and also to grow as an artist, narrator and designer.
With a background in illustration, I plan to push myself further by employing these skills and
knowledge that I have gained over the past 2 years at RMIT University into the project:
- Digital Illustration
- Music/ Sound Making
- Storytelling
- Graphic Design
- Concept Design

4. - Portray a story with a concept, supported with
illustration and considered design elements in each
game to make up for lack of coding skills.
- Implementing original background music and sound
effects.
- Not to be afraid to portray new ideas/ opinions.
- Short, quick and simple gameplay but creative in
narration, visual images and game mechanics.
- Make use of the project to hone my skills in graphics
and game design.
GOALS
These are my aims for this assignment drawing from the
previous assignments' feedback, where I use as a checklist
to make sure I don't go off track:

5. SO WHAT IS
IN EACH
GAME?

7. C/ONTROL
Synopsis
- The underground devil has consumed Saigon, Vietnam
to host a Living Chess Game, and you have been chosen
to participate.
Inspiration
- This game is heavily inspired by the concept of Living Chess
Game that used to be really popular in North Vietnam
around 1920s: Real human as chess pieces, with the
traditional costumes Áo Tấc, Tứ Thân and Nhật Bình.
- The SouthEast Asian, specifically Vietnamese family
traditions from parents of controlling the life of their child in
a particular way, mostly in Education and Marriage.
Gameplay
- Nothing. You don't have any control in this game, but you
realize from observing and it is a never ending loop!

8. IDEATION
CONTROL was developed from the class materials that I have
built into the actual game with these elements in mind:
★ It is a miniatures of reality, using visual puzzle - A
puzzle that is solved by observing, not interacting.
> You can't do anything with the game,
besides starting and closing it - Taking the
control back.
★ Using creative writing instead of putting in
GameText.
> Use handwriting elements in combination
with visual design to create a distinctive,
uneasy gameplay.
★ Vignette - bringing out the subtlety and
distinctiveness of individual experiences.
> With the use of blurred collage designs for
users to make up an experience of Vietnam
in the past in their head.
Here are the concept sketches I have made, with intentions of making this work in
Figma at its early stage.

9. VIETNAM 1920S - THE
HUMAN CHESS GAME
- Here are the materials I used for the concept of CONTROL (from Saigoneer and Rare Historical Photographs Vietnam)

10. STAMP DESIGN
- In Vietnam culture, we have a rich tradition and history
in lettering. Starting from Han, (chinese characters),
Vietnamese has adopted Latin letters for our language,
and Chữ Triện (the Stamp Design) is a part of our lives.
- I wanted to bring this to my game as part of practicing
design skills to enhance the experience for people who
have never been to or heard of Vietnam before.
Vietnamese Chữ Triện in Han and Vietnamese (latin)
My stamp sketches
Re-made using vectors in
Adobe Illustrator

11. PROCESS
I started making this game by using Twine to draw out the storyline
because I first intended to design this game using Figma and Twine!
- The reason I chose FIgma to make it in the first place was
because I appreciated Figma' s transitions and interactions.
Although it is mainly used for UIUX Web Designs, I had this idea
of using it to make a multiple choice - interactive game instead.
- For the first draft, I created multiple storylines/ characters. This
was not aligned with the goals I created earlier: to create a game
that is simple, short but creative.
First storyboard
Second draft - I deleted all the
expanding dialogues/ choices, only
focusing on the main function of the
game: making you feel useless and
going nowhere at all.
I added a loop
that will keep on
going back

12. PROGRESS
I grew fond of the idea of a loop going back again and
again, so I decided to move everything to Unity instead! But
this time:
- Buttons will not be clickable anymore, but I will
create a sense of clicking using animation.
Everything in the game will not be interactable.
- Adding in an eerie background music. For
CONTROL, I used music from freesound.org. This
suits the project so good!
I started to develop my visuals using Procreate, Illustrator
and Photoshop. The visuals are collages of real photographs,
combined with my illustration and compositing:

13. VISUAL LANGUAGE
Creative writing as part of storytelling:
This was inspired from The
Imagiste class materials, where
I try to portray my ideas of
being controlled through
words that appears on top of
the visuals after 1 second.
For the first frame, you have not
joined the game yet, so the
words are funky, following a
circular pattern and kind of
hard to read.
For the remaining frames, the
writings are more and more in
line, with the final visual
completely straight following
the grids.

14. UNITY TECHNICALS
For CONTROL, I used mainly:
- The canvas, containing a black
screen for fading in and out.
- Using IEnumerator to
countdown the time for the
sprites to show up.
- SceneManagement to switch
between scenes.
- An infinity scaler for the Ending
scene to scale out the image to
reveal its larger scene.
- Then automatically return to
the Title Scene after a short
duration.

15. Here are all the feedbacks that I
have received from the Showcase!
Based on the sheets’ popular
opinions, I have made some
changes to the game to make it a
better experience:
- Fake interactions with the
Start button - to create the
illusion of control at first.
- The ending timing has been
reduced to decrease
confusion.
When reviewing feedbacks, I realized
that some technical stuffs were out of
my level, so I tried to do the best I
could with what I thought would not
alter the expectation of what I
intended to portray.

17. IDEATION
Synopsis
- You are a soul about to be born into life. You want to be
cool and smart!
Inspiration
- From game character creation mechanism.
- A dream I had about an idea of God - creator of all things,
deciding all livings and the frustration of myself for not
being able to become who I wanted to be.
Gameplay
- Press space to read conversations and move the character
to the destinations using arrow keys.
Here is the early phase designs that I put into Unity
for testing, before deciding on the final concept:
The soul - playable character (left) and the portals (right)

18. C/REATION
CREATION was developed from the class materials that I have
built into the actual game with these elements in mind:
★ Taking a small-scale mechanic in games - Character
Creation screens to contribute to a whole new game.
> In this instance, I used the character's
thoughts and expression to guide players to the
paths they wanted to.
★ Vignette - bringing out the subtlety and distinctiveness
of individual experiences.
> With the use of creating a cute bob-shaped
character design - for the imagination of what
me, before being born into life would look like.
>There is no design/ image of God, as I don't
believe God is real. The dialogue of God shows
as UPPERCASED, when the soul's “like this" are
my portrait of a conversation with myself.
Because I wanted the soul to be a representation
of me, I recorded my own voice and used
Ableton's Sampler to make it an annoying sfx
that would play everytime a letter is loaded.
The BGM for the Game was my music trials from
the Digital Music Production Course!
I thought it was funky and matches with the
funny vibe of the game.

19. ILLUSTRATION
Here are the illustration I did for CONTROL using Procreate!
I wanted the game to have pop/ funky colours and shapes to
match with the vibe of the background music.
I really adored halftone and riso printing so I also implemented
these effects!

20. UNITY TECHNICALS
CREATION was quick to make, but
turned out to be the one I liked most
among the three!
For the opening scene, I used a
Scene Manager to control the texts
to load letter by letter, and attach a
Float script for the bouncing
animation of the soul!
An AudioManager Script for
displaying and activating the
miimimmimimi sounds of the
letters.
I used SceneManagement to load
the next scene upon entering the
portals (Be Smart & Be Cool).
My most favourite feature is the
auto-quit the application after a few
seconds! I think this went really well
with the story, while enhancing the
effect of my expression.

21. Here are all the feedbacks that I
have received from the Showcase!
Based on the sheets’ popular
opinions, I have made some
changes to the game to make it a
better experience:
- Added in more GuideText to
prevent the bug and guide
people on how to move.
- Adjusted the UI so that texts
will not be overlapped too
much when opening on
different screen sizes.
I decided not to make different
colours for each dialogues from the
God and the soul, because that lines
up with what I intended to show.
(That is exactly how I feel when I hear my own voice)

23. C/RIME
Synopsis
- Observe the moment of a body being freed to nature,
the choice to an ending of a life, and a circle of life and
death.
Inspiration
- While you may choose how you want to bring new life into
the world, you cannot select how you want to be removed
from the world. In a personal sense, I want to persuade
others that when you have lived your life to the fullest, you
should be able to choose how to die.
Gameplay
- Point and click.
I also used music I made for this game!

24. IDEATION
CRIME was developed from the class materials that I have built
into the actual game with these elements in mind:
★ The Frame
> Employing an element of a frame covering
the borders of the screen to increase the visuals
of the project.
★ Miniatures of reality, visual puzzle (Vignetting), blurred
boundaries.
> With no specific instructions on how to play, I
think it was interesting for people to just enjoy
the text loading, the music, animation and
transitions. Just like a lifetime, everything
passes quickly!
I planned out 4 sketches and only chose the first one due to lack of time.

25. THE FRAME
This is the trial frame that I put inside
Unity for testing!
At first I wanted to make something that
is free-drawn, curvy and unpredicted. But
I realises it does not do a good job with
contrasting with the initiate sprite,
So I used the symmetry tool to create a
frame that is inspired from old Victorian,
romantic book designs.
I added elements that are essential to this
project, such as: eyes (to observe), wings
(departing from life) and the moon to
increase the mystical overall aesthetic.
The first sprite with sharp rendering, highlighting the human. The animation, with blurred colours and lines to conveys the flow of life to be one with
the environment.

26. THE CYCLE OF LIFE
AND DEATH
I designed these two buttons for starting
and restarting the game!
I was inspired by Yin and Yang symbol from
Buddhism, and created these typography.
I also loved that I put the Start button for
“Death", and Restart for “Life"! This coincident
actually makes a lot of sense for CRIME.

27. UNITY TECHNICALS
Here are some of the functions I
have put in for CRIME:
- A Fade Screen Canvas for
fading in and out between
scenes - CrossFade.
- Using the same Text DIsplay
script from CONTROL -
displaying letter by letter.
- Fading in UI buttons and
clicking to change Scene
using SceneManagement.

28. Here are all the feedbacks that I
have received from the Showcase!
I have made some changes to the
game to make it a better
experience:
- Edited the Text speed so it
goes faster.
- Change the placement of the
Death (start game) button.
- Edited the buttons so that
they have hover effects for
people to know the place to
click!

29. STUDIO SHOWCASE SET-UP
This is my set up for the Studio Showcase for
players to easily access the games and the
feedback sheets!
I have also printed out the brief of my games
for people to understand a bit of context:
My laptop screen School Monitor
Feedback Sheets
Apps & Sticky Note
Game Window
when opened

30. THANK YOU FOR SEEING THIS
AND THANK YOU
FOR READING!
–
Nimuel S3926778
(this really long documentation)